How a licensed mug gets from a studio drawing to your cupboard

A licensed mug is two products at once. There is the ceramic, which is made the way ceramics have always been made, and there is the licence, which is a legal and creative process that runs alongside it and takes considerably longer.

The approval loop

Studios supply a style guide: approved artwork, exact colour values, rules about what may be cropped and what may not. A design goes back for approval at concept, at artwork, and again on a physical sample. Each round takes weeks, which is why licensed merchandise appears months after the film rather than alongside it.

The rules are stricter than people expect. Some characters may not be shown from certain angles, some logos have a minimum size, and colour is specified to a printed reference rather than a screen.

Getting the art onto the ceramic

The artwork is printed onto a transfer, applied to the glazed blank by hand, and then fired again. The second firing sinks the print into the glaze, which is what makes it dishwasher-proof. A design sitting on top of the glaze would survive a few washes and then start to fade at the edges.

Steel is a different factory

A double-walled tumbler starts as two steel shells, welded and then evacuated to create the vacuum between them. The exterior is powder coated, and the artwork is printed onto that coating rather than into it. Durable, but a surface layer, so hand washing extends its life.

What the licence buys you

• Artwork from the studio's own files rather than a redraw.
• Colours matched to the source rather than approximated.
• Safety and materials testing that the licensor requires and audits.
• A product the studio is willing to have its characters on.

Every piece here is officially licensed. Browse by character or by what the thing is.